The present invention relates to a method of constructing a cupboard or a wardrobe.
The conventional manner of constructing a cupboard or a wardrobe is to assemble a carcass by securing two vertical side panels to at least two horizontal elements such as the base, the top or a shelf. Once a self-supporting carcass has been assembled, is it is secured to a wall while taking care to maintain the sides vertical. If the sides are not correctly secured to the wall, then it will be difficult to mount the doors on the carcass in such a manner as to be level with one another and with the carcass.
Because of these considerations, it has hitherto required skilled labour in order to assemble and erect wardrobes and cupboards. The need to employ skilled labour, in particular in situations such as new homes where they are required to fit flush from floor to ceiling, has added considerably to their cost.
GB-A-965,052 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,950,051 disclose methods of furniture assembly which involve mounting on a wail two vertical tracks having a series of keyhole apertures, mounting on the tracks shelf brackets having rear projections that engage in the keyhole apertures and building a cupboard by securing horizontal and vertical panels to the shelf brackets. In such a construction, the weight of the cupboard is cantilever supported on;the vertical brackets. In modern methods of constructing homes, where the interior walls are made of stud-work, the sheets of plasterboard would not have sufficient strength to support the weight of a cupboard in this manner.
The present invention seeks to provide a method of constructing and assembling a wardrobe or cupboard that mitigates the foregoing problems and avoids the need for costly skilled labour.
In accordance with the present invention, there is provided a method of constructing a wardrobe or cupboard which comprises securing to a wall two vertical tracks each having an apertured surface, mounting on the tracks two side panels each having projections at its rear edge that engage in the apertures in the tracks and subsequently securing horizontal elements of the wardrobe or cupboard to the side panels, wherein the engagement of the rear projections of the side panels in the vertical tracks serves to prevent lateral movement of the rear edges of the side panels relative to the wall and to prevent the side panels from separating from the wall but not to support the weight of the side panels.
The tracks secured to the wall may be generally similar to tracks used for adjustable shelving. The apertures in such tracks are keyhole shaped. Alternatively, as the tracks do not support the weight of the side panels, the tracks may comprise an extrusion defining a channel, the extrusion being machined at intervals to provide entry points into the channel for the projections on the side panels.
The projections may suitably be screws that are driven into the rear edge of each side panel, the heads of the screws being held captive in the channel of the extrusion when not aligned with an entry point.
The tracks are preferably of the same width as the side panels and located between the rear edges of the side panels and the wall. Such tracks can readily be disguised by covering them with a veneer matching the surface finish of the side panels, leaving no obvious visible means of fixing of the side panels to the wall.
It does not require great skill to mount a first track on a wall so that it lie vertically. If the track is screwed at its upper end to the wall, then one can position a plumb line in the channel near the upper end of the track and adjust the attitude of the track until the plumb line lies exactly central in the channel over its entire height. The position of the track of the remaining fixing ""screws can then be marked accurately.
To locate the second track vertically and at the correct distance from the first track, it is only required to position one of the horizontal elements of the wardrobe against the first track and to mark the position of the opposite parallel edge of the horizontal element. This will ensure that the second track is also vertical and at the correct distance from the first track.
Each shelf, in the case of a wardrobe, may conveniently have a hanging rail pre-mounted thereon and it may have a front down stand to reduce the tendency of the shelf to bow and to increase the rigidity of the wardrobe by bracing the side panels.
While it is possible to secure a base element and a plinth to the side panels after they have been mounted on the wall, it is preferred to provide a pre-assembled free standing base, to position the base against the wall and subsequently to secure the tracks to the wall in alignment with the base.
In this case, the base may be provided with holes to engage dowels projecting from the lower edges of the side panels so that the side panels may be held in place on the base by their own weight alone.
The side panels may conveniently be provided with shelf support brackets on their inner sides, each bracket having keyhole apertures to receive the heads of screws projecting from the underside of the shelf. The screw heads are preferably tapered on their underside and dimensioned to engage the support bracket by friction once the shelf has been mounted on its support bracket.
When a wardrobe is to fit from floor to ceiling, it is desirable to avoid any gap between the top of the wardrobe and the ceiling. As there will always be variations in the height of rooms this normally requires to a skilled workman to cut a fillet that bridges the gap neatly. To mitigate this problem, the method may further comprise the step of mounting resiliently expandable fillets to bridge any gap between the upper edges of the side panels and the room ceiling and/or the side panels and an adjacent wall.
After the fillets have been mounted on the side panels in contact with the ceiling, it is possible to secure to them an embellishment board to impart a neat fitted appearance to the front of the wardrobe.